Returning to Blogging

It’s been quite a long time since I have posted on this blog.

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve worked on being healthy.

Returning to this blog is my way of remembering that I need to focus on being healthy and contine to write about the struggles it can take to be healthy.

I was very happy with how far I had made it with my weight goals. And then I looked for a new job, and moved back to my home state, and had to find a car, and had very new bills, and very new stresses, and in general, I let it all go. I gained all of the weight back I had lost.

Lao Tze one said something along the lines of “each long journey begins with one step.” I think sometimes you even backpeddle past all the tread you’ve made, and need to make that step again. Due to certain circumstances, I’m starting with a first step in a lot of ways. I think that starting to work through my diet and exercise will help me stay positive about all of the other “beginnings” that I’ll be working through.

Stay tuned for recipes. Tonight I slow roasted tomatoes with olive oil and garlic in my oven. They smell fantastic. I can’t wait to eat them tomorrow. The day before I made coconut curry stir fry over red quinoa. My love for healthy food is coming back. And my love for exercise slowly is too. Saturday I hiked Glen Onoko Falls, a beautiful hiking trail near Jim Thorpe, PA. I hula-hooped today up and down my street.

This will come together. It will just take time. And my successes and failures will be documented here. I look forward to sharing them with you.

I Ask YOU: How to Stay Full on a Vegan Diet?

My biggest issue thus far being a vegan has been staying full. The joke about how you eat at a chinese buffet and two hours later you’re hungry, or that same attitude about processed foods… has been happening to me now.

I’m not a big starch person. I like potatoes ok, but I’m mainly a pasta girl. I like quinoa (of course, it’s for lovers!) and I like wheatberries and cous cous. I do not like brown rice. I should also say, that while i like the above items, I feel overloaded by them when they appear in my diet every day. Oh man… especially bread. I learned recently how to make bread from scratch. I love making it, but I eat a slice for breakfast until it’s gone and then I really can’t eat it again for 2-3 weeks.

I know some people who could eat carbs til they are blue in the face, but I’ve never been a huge fan.

I am almost always hungry about an hour or two after I eat a meal. I don’t starve myself, I eat until I’m full, but I always have a hard time keeping full for more than 2 hours. I know it’s healthy to eat many small meals… but I’d be eating around 6 small meals a day if I did that.

Also, it’s a monetary issue. Some people say “it’s your health, it’s worth it!” Look… I’m on SNAP. I budget $50 a week for groceries. I take advantage of the farmer’s market and get $10 doubled once or twice a week (up to four times during the summer, that’s way easier!), but it’s very difficult. I’m lucky when I get all my meals for that amount between my local vegetarian grocery store and the farmers market.

I’m asking for tips from everyone out there: What are low cost, efficient ways I could stay full. I’m vegan for another week, and then I still want to eat like this as best possible. Please help!

Yeah… About those Updates…: Summary of My Month

This month, I learned it’s incredibly difficult for me to budget my time the way I thought I could.

 

Like… incredibly difficult.

And In The Beginning, There Was Food… And Holiday Weight Gain + RECIPE: Stir Fry with Avocado over Cous Cous

(Intended to be posted on the 2nd)

Parental Guidance Warning: This blog entry contains two pieces of foul language on account of eating terribly over the holidays. I think you’ll understand.

I stepped on the scale this morning, and I was really disappointed with myself. I gained 5 pounds in a week and a half.

::Shakes fist angrily in the air:: I let the holidays fuck up all my hard work for a month and a half.

Never has it been more clear to me why I need to maintain eating healthy food and exercising.

The Day Before the Day Before the Day: Re-Motivating

Dear January 2013,

I just completed a half hour walk with my partner, and we said something to eachother we haven’t had a chance to say for the last three weeks: “Hey, can we talk about my life?”

Starting the Transition

Update #1: Update to change all updates: Updates will become regular, starting this week.

In January, I will go completely vegan for one month. I already know the most difficult part for me will be not eating cheese. Especially because I cannot afford “faux” cheese. But, I do believe in trying to cut out as many processed foods as possible, so that’s good.

Day “I-Don’t-Remember-What-Day”: Starting Over, Tonight, Tonight

I tried very hard to live off of a plant-based whole foods diet. I was successful for about two weeks, and really “success” is a bit of a stretch. I ate a little cheese here and there.

But living on the poverty wage makes it extremely difficult to eat the food I want to eat.

Professionally, I work with the Development & Program Directors at Dwight Hall at Yale through the New Haven Education Initiative, AmeriCorps VISTA program in New Haven, CT. The VISTA program specifically means Volunteers In Service to America. I take the same oath as the President of the United States. And I earn a stipend based subsistence pay that is adjusted to the poverty line in my area. In New Haven, this means between $11k-$12k for the year.

I am not complaining about the wage. I signed up, knowing I would earn that wage. I merely mean that because of this wage, I qualify for food stamps, aka EBT or SNAP.

In some ways, I am very lucky. New Haven has a series of farmer’s markets that run year round. CitySeed, who run these farmer’s markets, have an amazing initiative to get SNAP recipients to the farmer’s market: they double your amount up to $10. The extra amount, up to $10, has to be spent on produce. I love that. But organic prices can still be difficult to maneuver around, even when you are getting double your money each day you go to the market.

Also, I forgot to mention, I’m trying to diet. I recently invested in appx 40 Lean Cuisine meals. My boyfriend’s parents bought me a step, which is my favorite form of exercise.

Lean Cuisine does not a whole food plant based diet make.

This blog will now be used to update, from time to time, about my thoughts, and complex difficulties with eating low fat, meat-included diets vs a whole food plant-based diet.

There are also variations of both that confuse that crap out of me.

Tonight, I start keeping track of my meals. Tonight, I start exercising on the regular. Tonight, I keep checklists to organize  my life.

Tonight, I start a blog version of the debate in my head over a practical life of including whole foods, and specifically organic foods. Oh, and trying to figure out if that means including meat. Oh, and if that means including dairy.

Day 8, 9, 10 & 11: A Win, A Loss, & A Reminder to Go Back To The Original

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, have not been my typical days. I’ve eaten, mostly, while walking. Yesterday it meant I spilled tomato sauce from my eggplant wrap all over my thrift store Banana Republic pants. The pants I wore yesterday and the pants I am wearing today are each pants I bought with my parnter a few weeks ago at a thrift store. Each were a little tight when I put them on, but for all intensive purposes “fit.” Today, they fit WELL. I’m not sucking in my gut to get them on, and once they are on, they are not sucked against my stomach and hips. This is the first in, what I hope are, a line line of victories.

Day 6 & 7: Volunteering Is My New Favorite Thing

On Saturday September 29th, I volunteered at CitySeed (http://cityseed.org/) for the first time. I spent three hours at the Wooster Square Farmer’s Market helping Nadine Nelson (http://about.me/NadineNelson) with her demonstration on tomato curry chutney.

While working with her, I learned a few really awesome techniques. She said with chutneys, it’s all about just putting everything in the pot together and letting it boil down and get thick. The portion of produce can be substituted out with other produce. For instance, we made tomato chutney, but you can make plum by substituting in the same amount of plums as you did tomatoes. Below are the photos I took while helping her:

Day 5: The Importance of Walking

Yesterday, my partner sent me the photo to my right with the caption “We r exploring. There’s some cool stuff around my house!!!”

I was elated.

Day 3&4: Compromise, But Not Too Much

I have maintained eating a plant-based diet, and I met some of my new goals with exercise. Today, and yesterday I walked for the full hour over my lunch break. It was invigorating, and I was happier after. In fact I even felt more productive at work!

But after I got home, and helped my partner through a difficult day, I spent an hour making a salsa from scratch, sour no-cream (tofu), pitted and sliced two avocados, and shredded pepper jack almond cheese. And then, because I had forgotten to preheat the oven, I microwaved two bake potatoes to put all of my toppings on. After I did, I took a big bite… and almost threw up. It tasted disgusting. I thought, at first, it was the sour cream. Then, I took a bite of the potato, and realized it was the potato. It was totally disgusting. It was too late to take it back to the grocery store, so I didn’t really have anything to eat.

Day 2: Damn It Sucks To Go On A Diet, But Of Course It Does, It’s Day 2.

Today I woke up extremely late for work (as I had a meeting yesterday later in the day off site, and didn’t have to go into work on time, so my alarm was late) and so I scurried quickly through my house and ate my home made granola clusters on the way to work.

Day 1: Go Crazy

Hi. My name is Gina Caciolo. Here I am wearing a hat I crocheted out of sustainable eco-alpaca yarn and a shirt I bought at the thrift store Impact!

Today is my first day towards a life of change and healthy living. This past Saturday I was drinking wine with my loving partner. I went to the bathroom at a certain point, and stepped on the scale. What proceeded was a lot of tears, and eventually a few slow pouty steps back to the bedroom. When my parnter looked at me, he could tell immediately I’d been crying, and I told him I stepped on the scale in his bathroom and found that I had gained 40 pounds in the last 4 years (in fact 20 in just the last year.)

He sat next to me, and held me, and said, “Well, this is the moment that you have to remember. Be determined and move forward.” He was right. That was the moment I needed to say, “Stop saying you’re going to do something, and start doing it.”